For us the biggest hit is definitely classes at the local science center. She's doing two dissections a month, and a biology class each month. The biology teacher is super nice and helped her with questions she had from her biology work at home. Besides that, saxon, saylor.org, and artes latinae are working well as usual and a lot is just self study.

I don't think two (+) hours of homework sounds reasonable at all, but it does sound normal from the schools I've seen.

I definitely don't understand taking away a year of foreign language. Fluency in a different language can help you in life with not only jobs but just in terms of talking to more people, and from what I've seen school foreign language classes tend to be subpar in the first place. The fact that people call a stronger education "the wrong direction" is exactly why I homeschool my kids. I don't see any of those classes having skills kids don't learn from the other classes/normal experiences.

Different kids need different things. My daughter has anxiety so she usually prefers that I take her in. I don't see the point of dropping your kid off just for the sake of toughening them up or whatever we're calling it now.

If she's interested in animals a zoology course might be a fun idea.

Nm